Lothian Buses has long been highly regarded for the quality of its maintenance and their unfailingly smart appearance coupled with the popularity of its vehicles on the secondhand market is testament to the attention paid to their maintenance throughout their lives. Stuart Jones recently met up with Lothian’s Engineering Director, Bill Devlin, to see the […]
SJ: Can you tell me about your background? HA: I joined Volvo Bus about four months ago now. The first and largest chunk of my career I spent with ABB, the big engineering company, in the power systems sector in transmissions, then in industrial robots and then before joining Volvo I was working with Bombardier […]
RNTP was held in one large hall in an exhibition centre on the outskirts of Bordeaux. The two main sides of the rectangular hall were in full length glass, on a day that was unseasonably warm and sunny. Coming so soon after Busworld Kortrijk, I had not expected to see many new products, but was […]
Rental companies play an important part in the way our industry operates. From an operators point of view they offer the facility to provide vehicles on a short or long term basis avoiding the need for large capital investments. Rental here is an all-embracing term but it can mean straight rental or leasing or contract […]
For many, many years I have reported in these columns on the annual Conference of the Community Transport Association (CTA). Sometimes they have been very good, other times they have been very frustrating with lots of airy fairy idealism leaving one with a feeling of a lack of realism. This year’s Conference fell very much […]
After challenging times at the beginning of the recession, finances at the Wright Group are ‘on the up’ with turnover expected to rise to around £220m for the 2013/2014 financial year from the £157m achieved in 2011/2012. Complete vehicle sales will be up from 1,200 to 1,400 standard units, CKD deliveries up from 200 to […]
‘It’s around £7,000 cheaper to trim a coach in E-leather than traditional leather and you can’t tell the difference when it’s new,’ said Carl Watkins, Sales Manager for E-Leather, adding, ‘you can after 18 months because the E-Leather stays better for longer. E-Leather matures over time and loses its sheen, whereas leather gets shinier.’ The […]
I’ve been meeting up with Anthony Marett of Don’t Travel Empty from time to time over the past five years as he has worked to get his on-line coaching community project off the ground. Throughout that time I have been impressed with the commitment and belief he has shown. The idea of creating a system […]